


Rapture

by Meatball42



Series: Rare Pairs [96]
Category: Church (Short Film 2019)
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Living on the Land, Nature Magic, Non-Human Humanoid Society, Post-Canon, Religious Conflict, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-06-30 04:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19845781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: Escaped from the Church, Sanga and Ashivon find Divinity in each other.





	Rapture

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fencesit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencesit/gifts).



> I loved this animatic so much that I hopped into writing before I managed to get through all of ToastyHat’s tag. So some of this is in line with her expanded canon, and some is not. I combined the Jossed ‘alternate dimension’ idea and the canon that there are demon cities and other cities that don’t follow the cultish Church. I also did not include the later updates that Sanga and Ashivon knew each other as children.
> 
> So… I hope you like this Different First Meetings/Canon Divergence AU!
> 
> The canon on which this story based is a FANTASTIC 3.5 minute original animatic set to Fall-Out Boy's CHURCH. [It can be found on youtube, here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0s0E_WsqvQ)  
>  **Content Warnings** for the animatic include a gladiator setting with graphic violence, murder, slavery, child death, and branding. There is also lots of religious imagery, though it is a made-up religion. The art style is such that the graphic nature of this content is a little less graphic than a normal animation.
> 
> The **Content Warning** for this story is voluntary bloodletting.
> 
> And lastly, sincere thanks to Morbane, whose in-depth beta work encouraged me to explore the world of these complex characters more deeply and honestly.

They are lucky that the Citadel is on the edge of the city.

Sanga, Ashivon, and the young demon Tselah manage to evade the warrior monks of the Church and escape into the woods. Sanga grew up in the forests of this country and she knows where to go. The Southernmost woods are dense, filled with dangers, and far from any other settlement. There is nothing between them and the border.

Sanga has never been out of the country. The Church does not let people leave. But she knows that Ashivon and Tselah will never live safely unless they escape. She has heard of other city-states, ‘barbarian’ lands where the people do not follow the holy laws of the Church. There, perhaps, they will be safe.

Once they are deep in the forests, beyond where timber is collected, beyond where foragers go, the far reaches owned by the wild animals, Sanga tells Ashivon that they are safe for now. She tells Tselah, who has been wide-eyed and silent since leaving the Citadel, that he can play as long as he remains in sight. 

Sanga stays vigilant, but it is not easy. Her Divinity mark was destroyed and she hasn’t felt the Light flow through the channels in her body since. It leaves her tired nearly all the time, and hopeless the rest. This is one of the reasons that she decides they should pass the winter in the forest. She cannot imagine trying to escape across the border, now, when even search for food requires a monstrous effort of will.

The other reason is that they are fugitives. By now, ever warrior monk in the country will know her face. Those at the border will be on guard, at least until months go by without a sighting. Then, when the guard has been relaxed, they can attempt to cross the border.

It is strange to Sanga that she must now fear the very organization she once aspired to join, to be worthy of. It is strange to be seen as the enemy in her own land. 

It is even stranger to realize that Ashivon was always seen as the enemy, when now, she knows him as anything but.

A year ago, Sanga honored demons for their place in the Church, but knew that they were unholy when not performing their work of executing Murderers. Now, looking into Ashivon’s eyes is the only time she feels close to the Light.

The demon boy, Tselah, is confused, but not as afraid as he could be. He was summoned from his home in a fiery demon city whose name Sanga cannot speak. He saw her and Ashivon fighting the Citadel guards, and now they are out in a strange, cool land with trees and grasses and animals he has never seen. He was tentative at first, touching moss and flowers and jumping backwards, but now he shouts and plays with squirrels, and tries to eat interesting plants.

He reminds Sanga of her littlest brother so much that she wants to cry.

When Sanga tells Ashivon that they are far enough in the forest that they will not be found, Ashivon performs a ritual to send Tselah back to his home city.

Sanga didn’t know that there was such a ritual. She asks if Ashivon can be sent home as well, but he shakes his head. He has rarely been called upon to speak, and struggles to explain to her how it works.

“Need… two… to One,” he huffs. His voice comes from somewhere deep inside him, but it is quiet and breathy. “Never… two. We.”

Sanga doesn’t understand, but she takes his hands. “Whatever you need me to do, I will. I swear it.”

His red eyes meet hers. It feels like staring at the High Holy Woman, immortalized in stained glass. Sacred.

Sanga collects stones and flowers and Ashivon makes a circle and a little patch for the young one to sit. He gestures to Sanga and they stand inside the circle, each with a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Ashivon whispers strange sounds, words in a language Sanga does not know and could never hope to know. It’s mesmerizing. She is so lulled that when he cuts his own chest with a sharp stick, she doesn’t react until the blood is smeared over the child’s forehead.

“What? Why?” she cries.

Ashivon pushes her and she falls out of the circle. A ray of light like fire burns down onto the child, so brightly that she has to hide her face.

When the light is gone, the young one is as well.

Sanga runs around the circle, wary of its magical power, to Ashivon. His chest heaves and blood spills down it. Instinctively, Sanga calls for her Light, but—

She gasps in pain as her own chest sears. The cut is no longer open, but spiritually, it will never heal, and it sears her when she instinctively reaches for the Light.

Ashivon looks up at her exclamation. He reaches for her with gentle fingers, caring fingers, as though he is not the one bleeding on the wild grasses.

“Hurt?” he asks.

Of course, that is a word he can say clearly.

“No, I’m, I’m fine. But you’re bleeding! And I can’t heal you…”

Sanga forces herself to stop, to breathe. They are not at the Citadel any longer. Ashivon’s blood being spilled does not mean he is about to be hurt more.

He waits while she recovers. His eyes are so kind; they always have been. That was the first thing she noticed about him.

Sanga pulls herself together. Her ability to heal is gone, but that does not mean she is helpless. Before she became a warrior nun, she was just a warrior. She trained with a plain wooden staff, she healed with plain herbs and old traditions. She can help Ashivon without the Light.

“Let’s get that cleaned,” she says. She forces a smile, although her heart still pounds, because Ashivon has done something amazing, and he deserves a smile.

Tentatively, he smiles back, stands from his crouch to follow her.

Months later, Sanga will realize that this was the moment she fell in love with him.

It is easier than Sanga expected, to live in the woods. Her first home was a village, far from the city or the Church, and she knows how to live off the land, but always with the help of her family and their neighbors. With just the two of them—and knowing that Ashivon had never lived in human lands outside of a Citadel—she thought they would struggle.

But Ashivon is strong, and clever, and willing to work all through the day. His presence is enough to scare away the larger predators, and he has good instincts for where the land underfoot is going to become treacherous. Between his hard work and abilities, and Sanga’s experience living in the forest, they manage to stay alive.

Sanga weaves reed to make rope and builds snares. Ashivon waits as patiently as a stone, stalks as silently as a cat, and pounces upon pheasants, rabbits, deer. Sanga never knows him to miss what he sets those beautiful red eyes on.

She teaches him which berries she can eat, and he eats one at a time to ensure they are safe for him, too.

They teach each other their languages. Sanga cannot speak Ashivon’s, but listening to the beautiful words is no hardship, and she begins to understand.

They sleep in a mossy clearing near a stream until the finish building a shelter. 

It grows colder. Sanga decides that they need to thicken the walls of their shelter, create a sturdier roof. They need to start finding ways to store food for when the prey becomes scarce.

Ashivon is better able to speak to her now, and she has come to understand his husky tones. Long hours fishing, searching for firewood, and looking up at the stars have allowed them to practice their communication beyond the most important phrases. He tells her about the home he remembers, the ways of his people. Their rituals of fire that are so far from anything Sanga knows. She tells him of her home before the Citadel, the holidays that followed the turns of seasons.

She talks about missing her parents, her brother and sister. He tells her he misses everything.

Sometimes, she catches him holding his hand over their cookfire, though he has said it isn’t really the same as the fires in his home dimension. He never does it when he knows she’s there.

As the winter nears, brisk and windy, Ashivon gets quiet. Even with the clothes they have made out of pelts, he shivers. Sanga would like to help.

“Come here,” she tells him.

Their woven mats on the ground inside the shelter are close simply because there is very little space. But she tugs him over to her bed, indicating that he should lie down beside her.

Instead, he sits next to her, his diamond-shaped face twisted with confusion.

“You’re cold,” Sanga explains. “We can share our body heat. It will keep us both warmer.”

“Are… you sure?”

Ashivon reaches out toward her outstretched hand, slowly but surely, like he can’t resist. He touches her hand, then trails his fingers up to her forearm, where her Divine marks sit lifelessly. He pauses there and moves no further. The look on his face is familiar, because Sanga saw it on so many Executioners and Murderers alike.

It is longing.

It hurts, deep inside. They have lived alongside each other for months, but they have not touched more than necessary to get by. Sanga had come to the conclusion that he simply didn’t want to touch someone like her, a human and a nun on top of it. But to think that Ashivon has been holding back to protect _her_ —that he thought her grief over losing her Light meant she would not touch _him_ —

She kneels before him and slowly reaches out. She touches his cheek, causing a shiver. She cups his face, lets her fingers sink into his hair, brush up against his ears, his horns.

Ashivon shakes and gasps, but when she tries to let go, his hands jump and almost clutch her arms.

“No! Please…”

Sanga wraps her arms around him and tucks her face into his neck, breathing in his demon-smell and feeling his soft fur against her cheek. It grows damp where her tears trickle down, but then, so is her neck where he is crying. They clutch each other the way they did once before.

Like then, Sanga feels that Ashivon is the only right thing in a world turned upside-down.

When her knees begin to ache on the thin makeshift bed, Sanga draws back. Her skin slides against his, her hands refuse to relinquish their contact. She moves away from him no further than necessary; she can feel his breath on her lips.

“Lie down.”

They collect his sleeping pelts and make a warm cocoon. Ashivon is taller than she is. Sanga worries, more sharply than ever before, that his unshod feet will be cold. He has so far refused to wear anything over them, despite the weather, and they are so vulnerable. She double-checks, with her eyes and by stretching out her own feet, that his are covered, earning a teary, affectionate smile.

When they are settled, Sanga ensures that their bodies touch as much as possible. The heat of him beside her, the fire flowing through his veins, the movement of his breathing, seems like a miracle. Her strange friend, warm against her body, feels like the Divinity granted solid form. Sanga feels as blessed as she ever did with Light in her hands.

Ashivon cries. She holds him close even as he shakes with the shock of touch. He falls asleep eventually, and when they wake, he stares at her, his glowing eyes stunned, rapturous.

He cries the next night, too, when they lie down together. He watches her hands when they are out hunting, his lips turned down as though he can’t contain his want. Sanga makes them both work, because there will be time to touch when winter comes, but at night she takes off her robe and lets him touch her skin, kisses his hands devoutly and watches him shake.

On the night of the first snowfall, things change between them. They are in their bed, sharing heat the way that has become normal, and he glows hot and whispers something Sanga can’t understand in his language.

Where his hands are on her, Sanga feels the fire enter her. It burns through the paths of Light left inside her, paths that have laid cold and dark for so long. She cries out, shocked at being touched once more in those empty places. Its heat radiates through her from her bones to her skin, from a glow behind her eyes to painfully hot in toes that have been cold for months.

It fades, and Ashivon snuggles closer than ever. Sanga can barely breathe with his heavy muscle draped over her, but she’s shaking. 

It’s a long minute before her hearts stops pounding. Adrenaline courses through her, but the warmth left behind is almost soothing, and under their small pile of blankets, they are toastier than they’ve ever been.

“What… was that?” she asks. 

“The Fire,” Ashivon murmurs into her ear. “Life.”

“What do you mean?” she presses.

His chest begins to rumble quietly and he rubs his cheek against her neck. “When you share Fire, it grows.”

Sanga isn’t sure she understands. “I don’t… have Fire.” 

“I know.”

“Is that… normal? To… share Fire that way?”

Ashivon moves so they can see each other clearly. He smiles tenderly. “Only when you are One.”

When Sanga was little, all the little girls in her village dreamed of Church weddings, with the High Holy Woman looking down on them and blessing their union. 

Sanga, in particular, wanted that. The children saw the monks and nuns of the Church perhaps once a year, when their remote area was visited for crop and livestock blessings, the Induction of new babies, and the Calling Up of warriors. She watched them, with their glowing hands that healed broken bones, and wanted nothing more than to be a part of the Light, in every way.

Fighting called to her, too, earning her a place in the Citadel. But every wedding ceremony she observed strengthened the yearning inside her. To be two people, blessed on high, joined as one soul in the Light.

Those dreams died a bloody death as she watched a bound demon beaten by the very Light that was supposed to watch over humanity.

And now… what else was there? No one in the Church would marry a disgraced nun, and no one would ever marry a human to a demon. And Sanga would reject a Church wedding, now.

Her understanding of the Light has changed. She felt it inside her bones, she healed with it. She knows it is not meant to brutalize, to burn. She knows it is the Church that did that.

Now, without the Light at her beck and call, she has to seek it out elsewhere. She finds it in the woods and fields that flourish by Its light. She sees its spark in the eyes of the animals.

She sees it in Ashivon.

Sanga loves the Light, and she still honors the traditions of her people.

But the next time she is in a Citadel, it will be to burn it down.

The next day, Sanga is quiet, thinking about what she wants to say. She goes out to check the traps and skins and prepares the rabbit she finds. By the time she’s finished, she is ready.

She sits next to their cooking fire on a log, tending the flames and keeping watch over their dinner as it cooks. Ashivon sits to her left. He is weaving some of the dried reeds they harvested last month. His fingers move fluidly, sharp nails deftly slicing when they need to.

Sanga asks, “What does being one mean to you?”

Ashivon smiles before he looks up from his work. “That you are one spirit. Not two anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“You move through life as one,” he explains slowly, giving it real thought. “Even if you are apart… you belong together.”

Sanga imagines the High Holy Woman in her many-colored visage, looking down.

“Do you think we belong together?”

Ashivon nods solemnly, though he still smiles at her, content. “I knew the moment I saw you.”

Sanga turns the rabbit on the spit while she considers this.

Where I am from… when two people become one, there are things you have to do. You have to stand in front of your family and village and declare your intentions.

Ashivon considers her words. “We have no village.”

“I… I know.”

Sanga stares at the fire long enough that when she looks down, she can pretend her tears are from the light.

After a quiet minute, Ashivon crouches in front of her and gently tilts up her head to wipe away the tears that have escaped. He is taller than her even like this, so he is looking down when he speaks.

“Whatever you need me to do, I will. I swear it.”

In the spring, Sanga collects rocks and flowers. Ashivon uses the rocks to make a circle and finds places for the flowers in Sanga’s hair and clothes, in the curl of his horn and under his sash.

This time, Sanga wields a sharp stick, spilling her blood over her hands and Ashivon’s. He holds her hands as they stand within the circle and whispers the language that calls the wind to blow, the trees to whisper back.

Demons don’t kiss, Ashiron has told her, but humans do, especially when they wed, and he honors her traditions just as she has embraced his. Ashivon leans down so that Sanga can kiss him as nature is Called to bind them together.

When Sanga looks down, the cut on her arm is glowing.


End file.
